1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for remotely customizing the installation of software on a computer system from a second computer system running a different operating system.
2. Description of Related Art
Typically, to install products that require custom user information, users must install the product on each machine, and then, after the installation, provide the user information to the product through some type of interface. This procedure is problematic for customers with many systems that require identical information because they have to manually launch and interact with interfaces on every system they install. Additionally, while some current programs allow remote installation, those machines must be running the same operating system for the remote system to be able to customize the installation.
A typical business computer configuration would include a computer system running the Windows operating system, connected to a series of HP-UX systems running the Unix operating system. The HP-UX operating system uses Software Distributor as its standard method for packaging and installing software. Software Distributor packages can only be built on HP-UX systems, can be converted to a single binary file, and cannot accept any user input during the installation process.
Software Distributor has four levels of software grouping: bundle, product, subproduct, and fileset. The basic unit of software distribution is the product. A product can contain both subproducts and filesets. Filesets are the atomic units of software distribution, and they contain a set of files and control scripts. Subproducts contain filesets and are used to conveniently manage logical subsets of a single product. Bundles are collections of products or filesets that may be installed as a unit. A depot is a collection of one or more bundles and or products.
To install a software grouping via Software Distributor on to the HP-UX systems, the user would have to log on to each of the HP-UX systems, install the software grouping, customizing each installation the same way on each system. There is not currently a supported way to customize a Software Distributor software grouping from an operating system other than HP-UX.
Customers can customize a Software Distributor bundle after it is installed. This is typically achieved by including documentation with the software product that instructs the user to fill out a configuration file or run an interactive script after the installation completes. This is problematic because customers may not read the documentation so they will not know to perform the configuration steps. This is also problematic and error-prone for customers who install the software on many systems because they have to spend a lot of time entering the same information over and over again on every system that is installed.
Software Distributor's “swask” command can be used to customize a Software Distributor bundle before it is installed. Unfortunately, its use is discouraged because the Software Distributor's user interface does not support the command. To customize software groupings this way, users have to know about this obscure Software Distributor command and understand the command-line syntax of Software Distributor commands. Even with use of the “swask” command, the user would have to execute it on a HP-UX machine, not the Windows machine.